No. 20 of 30 ยท Heatmaps and session replay
Microsoft Clarity
Heatmaps and session recordings at any traffic volume, for nothing, from Microsoft.
It runs on more than two million sites and has never had a paid tier, which tells you what Microsoft is actually collecting.
The verdict
Clarity gives you session recordings, click maps, scroll maps, rage-click and dead-click detection and AI summaries, at any traffic volume, for nothing. Not a free tier with a session cap: the product. On value it scores a 10 because no other entry on this list offers this much for this little, and for a small business trying to work out why a landing page does not convert, it is very hard to argue against.
It is also genuinely good. The recordings are solid, the heatmaps are readable, and the newer AI summaries do a reasonable job of surfacing patterns without making you watch forty sessions.
What you actually get
The price is the question, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a shrug. Microsoft does not run this as charity. Clarity sets cookies, and Microsoft's own documentation describes using the data it collects for its own purposes, which in practice sits inside the advertising and product-improvement machinery of a company that sells advertising. That is disclosed, it is legal, and it is a completely different bargain from paying nine dollars to a vendor whose only business model is your subscription.
So the privacy score of 3 and the data score of 3 are not complaints about quality. They record that you do not own this data in any meaningful sense, your export options are limited, and you have added a large third-party script from an advertising business to every page. If you are in the EU or UK you need consent for it, which means a banner, which means losing a share of the visitors you were trying to understand. For many sites that trade is fine and the price is unbeatable. It should just be made knowingly.
Best for
Small businesses and side projects with no analytics budget that need to see what visitors actually do, and for whom the alternative is not a cheaper tool but no behaviour tooling at all.
Getting it running
A script tag or a plugin for the common platforms, and a straightforward dashboard. There is a documented integration with Google Analytics that puts Clarity recordings next to GA4 segments.
What to watch out for
You are paying with data rather than money, and Microsoft's use of it is disclosed in its own documentation. Cookies and a consent obligation in the EU and UK. Heavy script. Limited export, so leaving takes your history with it. Traffic analytics are shallow, so it is a companion tool, not a replacement.
Pricing and practicalities
Free at any volume with no session cap and no paid tier. More than two million sites and apps use it. GDPR and CCPA support is documented, and consent is your responsibility to obtain. Read 2026-09-11.
Who should go elsewhere
Anyone who cannot add a consent banner, or who does not want an advertising company's script on every page, which is the whole reason the heatmaps in Absolutely Analytics exist and are included from $14. Also not a traffic-analytics replacement: pair it with Plausible Analytics or run something else.
How it compares
Against Hotjar it does most of the same work for nothing, which is the central fact of this category in 2026. Against Absolutely Analytics the trade is stark and easy to state: Clarity costs no money and some privacy, the other costs $14 and no consent banner.
Head to head:
The ten measures
Each measure is scored 0 to 10 and weighted. The overall figure is the weighted mean, and it is relative to the other 29 tools on this list rather than absolute. How this works.
What this rests on
Microsoft Clarity's own site and its published privacy and data-use documentation, read 2026-09-11; its stated installed base of more than two million sites and apps; its documentation on GDPR and CCPA support and the Google Analytics integration.
Desk research against Microsoft's published product and privacy documentation. The characterisation of how Microsoft uses the data is drawn from its own disclosures; I have not audited what happens to it, and readers with a strict requirement should read those disclosures directly.
This is a desk review. I have not been given access by the vendor, I have no commercial relationship with them, and everything above is my opinion rather than a statement of fact. If something here is wrong, tell me and I will correct it.